A traffic stop on Hilton Head Island last week led to a rare arrest for prostitution. “Officer discretion” landed the woman in jail while her client was able to drive away freely.
While patrolling on William Hilton Parkway around 1:30 a.m. Friday, a Beaufort County deputy spotted a white Mercedes sedan leaving the Red Roof Inn, located on Regency Parkway south of the Shelter Cove area. The officer noted the car was driving 55 mph in a 45 mph zone and had “swerved” over the highway’s white dotted lines into the neighboring lane, according to a sheriff’s office incident report.
The officer pulled over the Mercedes, immediately noticing the “odor of marijuana” coming from the car’s glove box. Inside the car he found a 45-year-old South Carolina man and a 38-year-old woman from Jacksonville, Florida. Asked how they knew each other, the man said they met on Facebook while the woman claimed they had matched on Tinder.
During a probable cause search, the deputy found an aluminum foil pipe in the woman’s purse, small remnants of marijuana throughout the car and a pill bottle in a compartment on the driver’s side. The bottle was filled with a prescribed anti-anxiety medication but also contained “larger blue pills.” The man told police the blue pills were Viagra and “tried to make this statement quietly with a deflective voice” to avoid the woman hearing him, the officer wrote.
Questioned by police about where he had met the woman, the driver “scrolled through his phone aimlessly and stated he had spoken with so many females that he couldn’t find it,” according to the report. When asked what his passenger’s name was, “it was apparent that he did not know.”
Soon after, the man gave the deputy permission to read his messages with the woman. The conversation began with both parties sending nude photos before the woman sent “her rates,” which were discounted from $225 to $200 for a half-hour session because it was reportedly her last weekend on Hilton Head. They then made arrangements to meet in the parking lot of the Red Roof Inn, where the woman was staying, and drive to the man’s condo at the Island Links Resort.
The driver admitted to police he had been “ordering a prostitute” he met on the popular escort service SkipTheGames, showing the officer the woman’s profile on the website. This was not his first time: He told police he had previously paid for sex about a year ago in Miami.
Although prostitution is illegal in South Carolina and in most other U.S. states, escort sites are permitted across the country because they are advertised as providing “companionship” instead of transactional sex acts.
Returning to the woman, the deputy told her he believed she was “engaged in acts of prostitution” and began to handcuff her. After admitting that the arrangement was for sex, she asked police if the man “was going to jail too, because he engaged it,” the report says. She also “attempted to justify her actions” by saying that prostitution was legal in other countries, the officer noted.
The woman was granted a $1,087.50 surety bond on Friday, the same day as her arrest. As of Tuesday afternoon, she remained in custody at the Beaufort County Detention Center.
Why wasn’t the man arrested?
South Carolina law casts a wide net in defining prostitution. The crime includes any person who “engages” in prostitution, “aids and abets” the act or transports someone for purposes of transactional sex. This can include both the sex worker and the client.
Staff Sgt. Robert Herlong, a spokesperson for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, said the choice not to arrest the man was left to “officer discretion.”
“He wasn’t arrested because … he was extremely cooperative throughout the whole thing,” Herlong said.
The incident report shows multiple instances of the woman being forthcoming with police, answering questions about the details of the arrangement and advising deputies she had fentanyl in her pockets. Despite this, Herlong says the woman was not cooperative with the investigation.
Although illegal prostitution is common across the U.S., prostitution arrests are rarely made in Beaufort and Jasper counties. Charges are difficult to bring forward due to the crime’s private and taboo nature, Herlong said.
“It’s a harder case to prove; it’s a harder case to investigate and dive into, because a lot of people don’t want to talk about it,” he told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Even when police suspect prostitution is part of a case, related charges may not be applied when the offense is superseded by violent crimes — like in a 2020 homicide in Bluffton’s Westbury Park neighborhood. Although one of the murder suspects had reportedly been at the victim’s home for a sexual liaison at least once before, the woman was not charged with prostitution. Instead, prosecutors focused on her more serious charges related to the killing.
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